Endogenous Infection Marker Guides Antibiotic Therapy

The endogenous infection marker procalcitonin can help to guide the use of antibiotics when treating infections. The course of antibiotic therapy is shortened, and its side effects and mortality rate also decrease, as researchers from the University of Basel and other colleagues report in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. They conducted a meta-analysis of over 6,700 international data sets from patients with respiratory infections. Procalcitonin is the precursor of a thyroid hormone that is undetectable or barely detectable in healthy people. If a bacterial inflammation occurs in the body, however, procalcitonin in the blood suddenly increases. This mechanism can be used by medical experts in the diagnosis of infectious diseases, as antibiotic treatment is only useful for bacterial infections. This is an important factor in respiratory infections, since distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections is often difficult in these cases.